marijuana usage

Parent Cafe
61

<p>It is not a smart idea to smoke street pot if you have medical issues. You don’t know how “Clean” it is. I know that it is used for pain, nausea control medicinally, but I also know that anyone who is immunocompromised is taking a chance at a fungal infection or other probelms if they do not get the pot from a reputable legal source. You don’t know what kind of dust or dirt is in there with the pot. </p>

<p>Yeah, I know that most college aged kids and many younger are smoking pot and abusing other substances. I know all about experimenting. It really puts us as parents into a corner. We want to be realistic about the situation, but there are the terrible risks. The consequences can be devastating, make no mistake about it. You almost want to say, to go on ahead, but don’t get caught, which is even more hypocritical, and ludicrous since what you are advocating is going down a path that makes you stupider and easier to be caught. You just hope that they stay within the lines at college, and that they are respectful enough not to bring it into your house, and really watch their step outside of the college’s protective zone. You warn them about buying, transporting, sharing, selling, etc. Any of those things can up the ante in consequences. And you pray.</p>

62

<p>MarinMom: Even the DEA (generally prone to excessively overstating the dangers of drugs) reports that adulterated marijuana is sporadic and rare. I wonder who you’re hearing about speed-cut pot from - if it’s some kind of third-hand knowledge, it’s probably wrong. The simple fact is that cutting pot with speed or cocaine is neither economical nor effective for the dealer. The effective adulterants for pot are those which increase its weight without changing its appearance, and generally include embalming fluid, baby oil, and so forth (as I stated above). Even then, a dealer could only adulterate it slightly, because pot has a very distinct smell, and an experienced user can generally tell very easily when it’s cut (I have a friend who can tell you the subspecies, variety, and likely exact strain given a marijuana bud to look at and smell).</p>

<p>cptofthehouse mentions the more real danger: contamination from the growing process (whether that is fungus, mold, or heavy metal contamination from the soil).</p>

63

<p>1: You should go easy on invoking as authority your buddy who can tell you the subspecies, etc., from smell. That guy has a problem. I can handle the don’t-ask-don’t-tell situation with my kids and their drug use (if any!), but if I found out that one of them was a pot connoisseur, it would be heavy intervention time.</p>

<p>It also may be the case that, back in the Pleistocene Age or thereabouts, some of us (without naming names) have had experience with PCP- or meth-laced marijuana. Maybe that even contributed to the decision that it was time to stop using it.</p>

64

<p>Hey, I didn’t say it was admirable (and I don’t feel any regret that I don’t possess that skill); my point was merely that marijuana, as a drug which comes in a form with significantly more distinguishing features than the standard white powder form of most hard drugs, is far, far harder to adulterate. In fact, so difficult that to sell adulterated pot to a experienced user like my friend would be near-impossible.</p>

<p>Another thing to remember about the ADHD marijuana issue is that for those of you who live in California, most of the higher-quality street weed is now actually coming from cannabis clubs (who grow for medicinal purposes), and so assuming you can ensure the trustworthiness of the supply chain between the club and the final user, is guaranteed to be adulterant-free and of high quality. This will sound ridiculous, but many growers (who grow for the clubs) in California name strains after themselves and base their reputations on the quality of the marijuana they grow. Strange world we live in, isn’t it?</p>

65

<p>tw14-</p>

<p>I could not have said it better. Thank you. </p>

<p>To me, it’s right up there with “Please, don’t have sex until you’re older, but if you do have it, please, please go on the pill.”</p>

66

<p>I have a 2180 SAT, am a National Hispanic Scholar and National Commended Student and I smoke weed on occasion. It is not bad for you unless you become a pothead (smoking more than once or twice a week) and from personal experience it affects your intellect. Maybe not permanently, but enough for you to screw up on a test, exam, etc. Also it decreases your motivation by a LOT, that’s just one of the effects of the drug. If your son is a very driven person then I don’t see anything wrong with smoking once in a while, but if he has always been lazy or is doing terrible in school then maybe you should be harsher on him.</p>

<p>Just my 2 cents.</p>

67

<p>I am not sure smoking pot is a great idea.</p>

68

<p>Why are we discussing this? Unless you have a specific medical condition, using any controlled substance is beyond stupid. Rationalizations such as “oh, well, it’s not as bad as alcohol” are childish and pathetic.</p>

<p>If you need to use drugs to feel better, it’s time to visit a medical professional and get yourself checked out. As for parents condoning this, give me a damn break. If you find your kid with weed, contact a mental health professional immediately. Get them some help.</p>

69

<p>Johnman, we are discussing this because kids use pot. And it’s not that easy to contact a mental health professional and get things rolling. Also those who balk at going to a mental health professional do not tend to get much good from the encounter. The problem with alcohol and pot is that they are all pervasive in campus culture. Though everyone is not doing it, enough are that it is a big incentive to join. Throw in the growing pains, adjustment, mood issues, anxiety, etc that comes with college and going away from home and you have a pretty danged good chance that your kid is going to be using pot. So what to do? You can’t prevent it. And punishing any sign of it often leads to even more misery and trouble. When you get a child who is in trouble, you realize how little you can do as a parent. THe question is what kind of damage control can you offer.</p>

<p>Well, in my opinion, being honest with the facts is a good first step. It is absolutely, positively true that pot is illegal. That there are penalties. You can get kicked out of school, arrested, put in jail, lose your financial aid, lose job opportunities, your job if you get caught using, selling, holding,buying, having used the stuff. Just because it’s everywhere does not take away from the dangers of being around it. I’ve known kids who have gotten into trouble just being around it; yeah, some highschools take a very dim view of kids even hanging around places where it is used, and employers that will fire you if they even think you hang around those who use it. That is the absolute truth. So if they are going to experiment with it, at least it’s not the old wink, wink, take a sip, have a glass attitude. Not the old, well, dad used to smoke it attitude. If you condone having it in your house, you are crazy in my book, because it has to be purchased and brought there. Every link in that chain has massive risks. I let my kids know the risks and tell them that they are the worst kind of rude boors if they bring it into my home. After someone in the community had their house wrecked in a police search for drugs, I think my kids have gotten some kind of idea who you are dealing with, what you are dealing with when you bring this stuff home. </p>

<p>You see, someone is buying the stuff, transporting the stuff, selling the stuff, dealing with a supplier if your kid is using the stuff. That someone just might be your kid. Sounds nasty to be busted as a drug dealer. Well, I know some pretty nice kids who just kind of drifted into that role. With parents who were condoning the use. So thely could now keep it on their person, in their backpacks, in their rooms, cars, home. While other kids had parents who would flip if they even got a whiff or inkling it’s being used around their kid, these kids would end up carrying and supplying. It’s easier than you think to inch into some pretty nasty area when you condone pot use.</p>

<p>And yet, realistically it is there. A very delicate balance and a dilemma for all of us parents. All we can do really, is inform and hope that some of what we say rings in their heads as a danger sign if they go to far into some of these areas. That they don’t get the general feeling that it all right, normal, ok, cool with us.</p>

70

<p>I’d just like to make a couple comments about legality and how that issue affects young people. First of all, while it’s true that terrible consequences can come from drug arrests, in certain contexts (i.e., on many college campuses) the consequences are, in fact, minimal. That’s an argument for knowing what the consequences might be where you actually are, of course.
As to the morality of disobeying the law, I think people lose respect for the law when it doesn’t treat like things in the same way. In this particular case, the differences between how the law treats alcohol and marijuana are so absurdly disparate that it’s really impossible to justify. All the health problems with marijuana? Alcohol-related problems are worse. Danger to others? Worse for alcohol. Likelihood of debilitating addiction? Likelihood of leading to even more dangerous drugs? I think those are equal, or worse for alcohol. It’s hard for young people to respect laws like that. In other words, young people with respect to marijuana are a lot like a vast percentage of the population was with Prohibition.
I would still tell my kids not to smoke pot, for lots of reasons. But I also tell them not to drink alcohol.</p>

71

<p>I sometimes wonder if people just have a knee-jerk reaction to pot because it’s illegal, not because of its short- or long-term effects. I don’t do marijuana and never have, but I also don’t have any illusions about the effects of alcohol, yet most American adults wouldn’t be nearly as upset by hearing their children had a single drink on occasion.</p>

72

<p>You can buy alcohol at store, order it at a restaraunt, enjoy it in and with foods, legally and are even encouraged to do so. Other than the medicinal uses, there are no such legal venues for pot. When you buy pot, you are getting it from a drug dealer. Those creatures are not particularly reliable or trustworthy or safe. They’ll turn you in if it will give them a deal. The pot can be full of fungus, or other contaminents that would never pass FDA standards. And if share the stuff, you are putting yourself in that category.</p>

<p>There are societal benefits to sharing a drink. Wine is a wonderful gift to give. You get caught giving away pot, you can do hard time. Big, big difference.</p>

<p>It is not use of alcohol, but abuse that leads to problems. The first abuse is age related. It is illegal to drink under age 21. The next thing is drinking too much. There are many other legal things out there that are dangerous even lethal if abused, but useful when used wisely. When my kids turned 21, they are welcome to share our wine at dinner, have a champagne toast, enjoy a cocktail Hopefully some of their youthful abandon has been curbed somewhat. They are older and supposedly wiser. There are those who cannot handle alcohol or any kind of mind altering drug, legal or not. But studies show that the older you are before you start this stuff, the better your chances of not getting into an abuse cycle, and getting out of it quicker if you do get into it. Young kids who start substance abuse have a much higher risk of being stuck in that cycle. Though I don’t agree with the 21 rule for alcohol, I support it as the law. But it isn’t so much how our law treats alcohol, as our society, our history, our social lives, our religion even treats it. In my life, having alcohol without abusing it is part of some of our more festive, happy moments. I don’t advocate banning it. Prohibition did not work.</p>

73

<p>cpt, you just made an excellent argument for legalizing marijuana.</p>

74

<p>cptofthehouse,</p>

<p>Again, you’re not separating the legality and the actual effects.</p>

<p>Yes, pot is illegal. But separate its actual effects from the legality. What, other than a century-long campaign by the the federal government to demonize it, makes pot any worse than cigarettes or alcohol?</p>

75

<p>Johnman, if you found out that your underage kid had bought a can of beer or a bottle of southern comfort, would you contact a mental health professional immediately and get the kid some help? Because, guess what – what the kid would have done was just as illegal as smoking pot. Calling an argument “childish and pathetic” is hardly a persuasive refutation!</p>

<p>The fact is, my son (who’ll be graduating from high school in two months) has never smoked pot. How do I know? Because we’re very close, and I’ve made it very clear that although I’d much rather he didn’t (because I’m convinced that regular use of it can be bad for a growing brain), if he tried it and told me about it I wouldn’t be angry with him. And also because some of his classmates are, in fact, potheads (and have been since 8th or 9th grade), and from seeing what’s happened to them academically, he very much feels that regular use of pot when you’re an adolescent is a self-destructive course of action. (He once told me that he thinks something like 10-20% of his classmates smoke pot regularly, but only a handful to the point that they come into school stoned, etc. And, yes, there are a number of kids who take cocaine, too, and at least one kid who’s been dealing drugs since he was about 14. That kid, by the way, is not going on to college. Plus, a whole other group of kids who get drunk all the time. This is at a small suburban public high school that’s been consistently ranked among the top 10 in New Jersey.) </p>

<p>Do I assume that my son will try it at some point in college? Yes, probably. And as long as he’s careful about it, and doesn’t do it anywhere but inside somebody’s dorm room and doesn’t carry it around with him, and never does it during the week, and most importantly doesn’t make a habit of it, it wouldn’t really bother me too much. Excessive drinking (and he’s never been drunk in his life, either) would bother me more.</p>

<p>I’d never smoked or even seen pot when I graduated from high school in 1972 (although I knew there were plenty of kids who did it), and had never had more than a glass of wine, either. I tried both in college, and discovered eventually that especially given how small I am, more than a small amount of alcohol made me sick (it still does), and that although I smoked pot on occasion at parties because it was always around, I didn’t really like the way it made me feel, at all. (I always felt like it deprived me of about 50 IQ points I really didn’t think I could afford to spare!) Honestly, I hope my son ultimately reaches the same conclusion.</p>

76

<p>I did not think I did, Hunt. Pot does not have the history of alcohol. You also generally smoke the stuff. Around here, in my state, we have been trying to stamp out smoking not encourage it and enlarge the pool of smoking substances. </p>

<p>UCLAri, I don’t like cigarette smoke. Lungs get enough toxins. I would not want to have to deal with another substance being smoked. You drink alcohol, and it does not have second hand effects. We need another substance to be smoked? I think not.</p>

77

<p>Donna, there is a big difference between finding a bottle of wine in your kids room and a bag of pot. Though underage drinking is illegal, you can find alcohol in perfectly respectable places including your own wine cellar if you have one. Most of us don’t have pot gardens. If you kid has pot, he had to have indirectly dealt with a drug dealer. That in it self is a problem for reasons I stated earlier.When you start buying substances, illegally, you are entering the murky world of drug dealing. Though I do not support legalization of pot for a number of reasons, I will agree with the other posters that the fact that the substance itself is illegal, is one of the big dangers of it. You can be dealing with a rough crowd. That is not as often the case with alcohol. Also you can have 20 cases of wine in your room, and not have a problem with the law if it is not open, even if you are underage. If you have a trunk of pot, you are going to be doing some hard time for a long time.</p>

78

<p>I’m not saying that I like smoking. I’m saying that marijuana has been demonized a great deal despite the fact that we have legal and readily available products that can be just as, if not more, harmful to the average person.</p>

<p>You an also find alcohol in plenty of not-so-respectable places as well. So what?</p>

79

<p>“You drink alcohol, and it does not have second hand effects.”</p>

<p>Tell that to the Highway Patrol. Cpt, both pot and alcohol have pluses and minuses, but many of the problems related to marijuana would be solved by legalization.</p>

80

<p>I do tell that to highway patrol, and have drinks with them as I say so. It isn’t the drink, it’s the abuse of it. Many of highway patrol drink as it is part of their family culture, but danged few smoke pot. One flunked drug test would be the end of their jobs. </p>

<p>You find everything and anything in not so respectable places. But are far, far more likely to have at least secondary contact with the lowly drug dealer to get pot, most alcohol is obtained from respectable places. In fact it is easier to find in respectable places. If I wanted to get some pot tonight, it could be a risky proposition. A glass of wine, not at all. No comparison. I am not arguing that we don’t have a lot of legal things that are harmful. I know we do. </p>

<p>The problem with pot is that it is another thing to smoke–and smoking is a problem we are trying to contain right now. And second hand smoke is a problem to bystanders. So as we are trying to cut down on kids/folks smoking cigarettes we legalize another substance to smoke that has the deleterous effects of what alcohol does at its worst? We then have to have levels of pot that are legal, worries of younger kids getting into pot when it is legal, and regulating the pot if it is legal. It is lose, lose in my book. Why on earth would you want to legalize another form of smoking that has mind floundering qualities so you should not drive or do other such activities when taking it?<br>
The alcohol is legal already and has a place in our history, society, religion, etc. Pot is that great that we want to make such a place for it? I don’t think so.</p>